Notes on systems that quietly do nothing

Most server misconfiguration doesn't crash anything. It sits there returning exit code 0 while accomplishing nothing at all, and you find out eighteen months later. These are notes on that category of failure.

• Your logrotate config is probably doing nothing
  If the writing process never reopens its file handle, rotation gives you a directory full of empty files.
  2026-07-19 · 6 min
• fail2ban on Debian 12 matches nothing by default
  Two independent problems stack: there is no auth.log, and the unit is named ssh.service, not sshd.service.
  2026-06-02 · 5 min
• apt-daily runs every day and updates nothing
  The timer fires, the service reports success in under a second, and your package index stays frozen.
  2026-04-11 · 4 min
• A minimal nftables ruleset for a single-purpose VPS
  Thirty lines, a default-drop input chain, and the two rules everyone forgets.
  2026-02-28 · 7 min